Matthew Pavao Talks Massachusetts AI Trends with Law360

It's all eyes on AI in Massachusetts. 

AI is making an undeniable impact at innovative companies and the law firms that serve them, and Massachusetts' concentration of biotech and pharma research creates unique considerations, Fenwick's Matthew Pavao told Law360 in an interview about trends to watch in Massachusetts. 

"I would say 50% of every prospective new client that I speak with is in AI drug discovery," Pavao, Fenwick's co-lead for patents & emerging technologies, told Law360. "And candidly, that goes from, 'We have no idea how to use AI to do it' — it's really aspiration more so than ability to use it — to companies that are really dialed in and have some thoughtful ideas on how to drive it." 

It's also proving a useful tool for law firms, though chemical and biological inventions often require more of the human element when it comes to intellectual property protections, he explained. 

"There are some unique drawbacks on how much we can leverage it from an [intellectual property] and patent point of view," Pavao said. "There is some uniqueness to drafting patent applications, in particular biological sequences and chemical structures, and unfortunately AI tools have not developed as robustly in that area." 

Read the full article at Law360.